Cristina Caballero, Dialogue on Diversity

Ma. Cristina C. Caballero is President and founder of Dialogue on Diversity, Inc., a non-profit educational organization actively promoting constructive dialogue among women of varied ethnic traditions in the U.S. and around the world. It is concerned with social, economic, and public policy issues of importance to women seeking effective empowerment. A special focus is the advancement of women’s economic position through entrepreneurship training, and with an effective employment of contemporary information technology, as the key to the realization of political and social equity.

Dialogue on Diversity’s annual cycle of programs, developed over the score of years since the organization’s founding, includes an Internet Data Privacy Colloquium in late January, the Public Policy Forum in March (which is Women’s History Month), the Health Care Symposium in May, the Entrepreneurship/IT Conference in July, and the Domestic Violence-Immigration Colloquium each October. The year concludes with a Holiday Fair at which, in collaboration with a number of community service organizations, collected toys, books, and craft sets are distributed to children of economically disadvantaged households in the Washington metropolitan area.

The organization Dialogue on Diversity had its inception in the activities of a delegation of women State legislators and others to the then Soviet Union in 1989, and in return visits of women from Russia and the countries of what is now called the Near Abroad as they visited in Washington and other U.S. cities. Subsequent ventures in interchange included visits organized by Ms. Caballero herself to Moscow, Leningrad (now Peterburg, or St. Petersburg), Tbilisi, and Tashkent, followed by a reciprocal visit of a C.I.S. women’s delegation (pioneer entrepreneurs, academics, and civic activists) in July, 1992 for a two-week series of dialogue sessions in Washington and four other U.S. cities. These meetings brought together government officials, medical professionals, academicians, and journalists from C.I.S. countries to join with American women leaders who were their professional counterparts, exchanging perspectives and conducting wide-ranging, productive, and provocative discussions. From these experiences a nucleus of interested women, under Ms. Caballero’s tutelage, soon took form, with the purpose of perpetuating these discussions among women of diverse ethnic, national, and social communities in the U.S. and abroad. The name Dialogue on Diversity was the natural designation for the enterprise.

In addition to organizing a continuing series of seminars on a variety of subjects for Dialogue on Diversity, Ms. Caballero has been the moving force in the presentation of conferences under the Dialogue’s sponsorship focused on social issues on the U.S. scene, especially topics relating to women’s entrepreneurship as the key to economic advancement for women and to their consequent empowerment in the social and political realms.

During her career Ms. Caballero has been especially concerned with the interests of the elderly, the status of women nationally and internationally, and issues of public policy affecting the Hispanic and other ethnic communities in the U.S.